Air Scholars/Phantas
Arkhural:
Over-tweaking
Phantasmal creation in its initial form was one of the most awe-inspiring (i.e. overpowered) spells in the game. As Air scholars wreaked havoc left and right with barely a thought, the spell subsequently began to get a tweaking here, another tweaking there, and so forth. None of these tweakings, until the upkeep solution was put in, were enough to make it a balanced spell. However, as it currently is, I think PC has a bit too much baggage on it, the result of the piece-meal way in which it was "fixed."
As best as I can remember, the following are the post-implementation changes to PC:
- 1) Can not have more than one of each illusion at a time.
- 2) Delay between castings
- 3) Illusions disappear if caster is not in room
- 4) Percentages for the illusions
- 5) Mana upkeep
Proposal
I would like to get rid of #2. In light of the upkeep, this is just an added kick to the groin for a spell which has already been brought back to a reasonable power-level. I would also like to change #4 in a meaningful way, which will be outlined below.
The learning system
Furthermore, there's always been some sort of stupidity associated with the learning system that I thought could be done away with. In its current form, you learn a mob by toggling on your "learning mode," kill the specified mob (basically, land the last hit), then you hopefully remember to turn off the toggle before you go off slaughtering a bunch of sea lions. If the scholar does go off and kill a bunch of random mobs without turning off the toggle, and goes over his 10-illusion limit, then he will start to lose his other illusions in a random fashion.
There are a couple problems here. The first is the toggle system. Although it works, it's clumsily designed. As I mentioned, most people really just want to target a specific mob, since they have a limited number of illusions that they can learn. A better system would probably allow for this type of specificity in the targetting of future illusions.
The second is the "landing the last hit" way of learning. Given the way that this works, an air scholar can technically (and more often than not does) have a crack-team of warriors go in and do most of the dirty work, and then go in solo at the very end and land a lucky shot. This rewards the scholar for doing virtually none of the work, which strikes me as being wrong. On the flip side of the coin, the scholar could have solo'd the whole mob, and then accidentally have an illusion of his accidentally land the last blow, and will consequently get nothing for all of his work.
This seems to be equally unjust. A better system would make it so that the learning of an illusion is dependent upon the amount of time or damage that the scholar has spent with his target, as opposed to some arbitrary indicator like a last hit.
Lastly, I have a problem with the way that illusion learning is handled once the upper limit has been hit. As it is, if the scholar leaves his toggle on, then there is a distinct chance that he will lose an illusion that he has spent enough time to get to 100%, and in its stead get a new illusion at 1%. Why anyone would forget something that he has spent a significant portion of his life studying, in favor of something that he just learned, is beyond me. I would propose that the scholar get to choose the slots that he puts his new illusions in.
Proposal
This is what I'd like to see. A scholar goes into combat with a specified mob, and types "learn (number)." Right off the bat, the toggle thing is fixed. Furthermore, this gives scholars direct control over what illusions they keep and discard, so we get none of the stupidity at the 10-illusion limit, and low-level scholars will start getting illusions immediately, rather than waiting until they're big enough to kill the siyyad.
Once scholars have typed that in, they will start to build a percentage up for that mob. The rate at which that percentage increases should probably be dependent upon the number of rounds that the scholar is in combat with the mob, modified by the gap in level as well as the mob's total hp count. The exact details will have to be worked out.
Once the scholar gets the illusion's percentage up to 50%, then he can finally create it as a charmie. As in the current system, an illusion at 50% will be significantly weaker than one at 100%. For the scholar to get the percentage up to 100, he will have to train with it, as in the current system. This means that for any illusion to be effective, scholars will have to have spent a significant amount of time both observing the real mob, and getting its illusory counterpart to act like the real one.
Comment
A potential problem that I can see would be scholars trying to learn incredibly difficult mobs, i.e. Anirim and Xthjich, by going into combat for a round or two, then fleeing, and so forth. However, I think this is a negligible concern. Firstly, they'll have to type "learn #" in combat, which could have a lag associated with it. Most of the incredibly tough mobs are powerful enough to finish someone off in those lagged rounds. Secondly, given the level difference and the amount of hp that those mobs have, the number of rounds that a scholar would have to spend would be super, super high.
If this doesn't sound like enough to counter the threat of illicit mob-learning through hit-and-run tactics, we could also make it such that the scholar has to observe the mob die in order to accurately recreate the illusion (observe, not land the last blow).
Place criticisms/comments here.
